The Year of Hanks

As a preamble, I'd like to apologize for the time it's taken me between the viewing of this film and my publishing the corresponding post, but as you'll soon learn, this film was heavy enough to anchor a boat, and it took me a lot of time, research, and reflection to discuss it the way it deserved. "You can't just say, 'I promise,' then forget about it. 'I promise' are the most important words you'll ever say." I'd never before seen this movie, and given the fact that Hanx was uncredited in this role, I honestly didn't expect to see much of him. A brief cameo, maybe. At first I considered this film a technicality - if I were doing a "Year of Bowie" this would have been Zoolander. A "Year of Damon?" Thor: Ragnarok. A "Year of Lowe?" Tommy Boy. A "Year of Stan Lee?" Pick a Marvel movie. Nothing to really showcase an established actor's chops. A favor he did for a friend on a w

I began this project just over three years ago. My intent was, as most of you know, to complete a viewing of all Tom Hanks' films in a year. I made a respectable showing at first, but then things happened. I had a miscarriage. I got pregnant with my second child. My first was potty training. I got a new job. I moved. I was laid off. My son turned two, and for those of you who have a two-year-old, I don't think that needs any further explanation. The world was blindsided with a pandemic, which both Hanx and his wife, Rita Wilson, were affected by. Protests arose over civil rights issues. In short, my world, and the greater world, was in chaos. I lost sight of my goal, and much like a beloved volleyball in Cast Away, drifted off beyond my reach. Times are tough for everyone these days. There's no arguing that. And for quite some time now, I've been thinking about resurrecting this project. I've said for about half a decade that I wanted to learn Latin. Finally, t

"I've been too chickenshit afraid to live my life so I sold it to you for three hundred freakin' dollars a week!" Huzzah! At last we've arrived at the first (and second, and third) appearance of Hanx's perennial onscreen love interest, Meg Ryan. What is it about these two that just throws sparks? For all his affable everyman likeability, Hanx has never really been what you'd call a sex symbol. Ryan, for her part, is cute as a button, particularly when she lights up with that megawatt smile (which has tragically been destroyed in a series of cosmetic procedures gone horribly awry. RIP). Pair that with Hanx's dimpled grin and you've really got something that can only be described as adorable. The film opens as industrial employee Joe trudges his way to work among a mass of other corporate zombies all dressed in black, slogging their way into workaday hell garbed entirely in black like mourners at the funeral of the life they imagined for the

"There are people demonstrating outside our building! Black people with basketballs! You're putting everyone at risk!" I came into this knowing little to nothing about this movie. I'd heard the title before, and it probably stuck in my head at some point because it's a catchy sort of title and I wasn't really clear on what it meant. To be honest, I had no idea Tom Hanks was in it; I honestly didn't know about any of the A‑listers who make up the cast. There's probably a very good reason for that, but I'll get to it in a bit. The events unfold through the narration of one Peter Farrow (a very Moonlighting -esque Bruce Willis), who is shown at the very beginning of the film to be a highly successful, if perpetually drunk, author. He arrives at a ritzy gala to promote his novel, The Real McCoy and the Forgotten Lamb , where he is fawned over by PR reps, the press, and the public at large. In voiceover, Farrow begins to tell the story of h